Pagan Toponyms in the Netherlands1

Pagan toponyms in the Netherlands1 Claudia BOSHOUWERS Introduction For the study of pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs in north- ern Europe, toponyms can be an invaluable source of information. Scandinavian scholars have long been aware of this fact and have dedicated many articles and books to the subject.2 In addition to place- names with heathen connotations pointing archaeologists to possible sites worth excavating, purely philological studies of the names have also proven very fruitful. They have shown us which deities from Norse mythology actually received public worship and where they were worshipped: not just in what types of locations, but also in which parts of Scandinavia (Brink 2007, p. 105-136). Sometimes this has led to new insights on the role and significance of these deities (Brink 2007, pp. 115-116). Studying the distribution of cultic place-names has also given us insight into the social and political dimensions of pagan cult practice (Brink 2008, p. 63-65). Thus place-names are a true gold-mine of information on pre-Christian beliefs and practices in Scandinavia. Scandinavia is not the only part of Europe where echoes of Ger- manic heathendom remain in place-names. Germany, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands also preserve memories of pre-Christian beliefs in some of their toponyms. Yet these are far fewer in number, and in comparison to Scandinavia precious little research into them has been done. 1 I would like to thank dr. Per Vikstrand, prof. dr. Stefan Brink, Buddy Laming, Anouk Nuyten, Guus van Loon, prof. Rob Rentenaar and Kees Samplonius for their help in making this article possible. 2 Some important researchers in this field have been Magnus Fredrik Lundgren, Oluf Rygh, Johannes Steenstrup, Magnus Olsen, Elias Wessén, Thorsten Andersson, Lars Hellberg, Per Vikstrand, John Kousgård Sørensen, Jørn Sandnes, Bente Holm- berg, Stefan Brink, and many others. Onoma 48 (2013), 37-57. doi: 10.2143/ONO.48.0.3223613. © Onoma. All rights reserved. 38 CLAUDIA BOSHOUWERS Most abundant among these is Britain, both in terms of the attested number of pagan place-names and in the amount of research that has been done. The first to venture bravely into this—in his time—virtually unchartered territory was John Kemble, who published a list of place- names he thought to be derived from gods’ names in a book from 1849 (Wilson 1985, p. 179). He was followed by scholars such as Ernst Philippson, Bruce Dickins, Eilert Ekwall and Sir Frank Stenton, who in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s devoted much time to the collecting and discussing of place-names which they felt preserved evidence of Brit- ain’s pagan Anglo-Saxon past (Wilson 1985, p. 179; Gelling 1978, p. 158). Their work was quite extensive and few new names have been added to the corpus since that time (Wilson 1985, p. 179; Gelling 1978, p. 158). Indeed, much of the work done by later scholars has consisted of weeding out names that Philipsson, Dickins, Ekwall and Stenton mistakingly believed to refer to pagan beliefs and practices (Wilson 1985, p. 179; Gelling 1962, pp. 7-25; Gelling 1973, pp. 109-128). Prob- ably the most important scholar to contribute to this process and to more recent discussion and investigations is Margaret Gelling, who has con- cluded that a total of forty-three English place-names containing refer- ences to Anglo-Saxon paganism can be securely identified (Gelling 1978, p. 158). The theophoric names in Britain refer to the gods Wōden, Thunor and Tīw (Gelling 1962, pp. 10-15), and perhaps to the goddess Frig (Gelling 1962, p. 19). A second category of Anglo-Saxon sacral place-names are those containing an Old English word for ‘pagan sanc- tuary’, either hearg or wēoh, wīh. These can occur as a simplex (as in Harrow and Wye) or compounded with a second element, which denotes a location (Gelling 1962, pp. 8-9). Crossovers of these two categories do not occur, that is, neither hearg nor wēoh/wīh is ever combined with the name of a deity (Gelling 1962, pp. 8-9). The most frequently occur- ring second elements in Anglo-Saxon sacral place-names are ‑lēah ‘wood’ or ‘grove’, words denoting a high place or mound, such as ‑beorg, ‑dūn, ‑hlæw or ‑hōh, and ‑feld ‘field’ (Gelling 1962, p. 15). Various other scholars have made closer studies of the specific elements which occur in Anglo-Saxon pagan place-names (see for instance Meaney 1966; Wilson 1985; Hall 2006; Semple 2007). For Germany, perhaps the most important researcher has been Wolfgang Laur, who wrote several works on theophoric and cultic place-names in Germany (Laur 1949, 1954a, 1954b, 1986, 2001). Another important scholar was Adolf Bach, who treated the subject in PAGAN TOpONYMS IN THE NETHERLANDS 39 his Deutsche Namenkunde 2, 1 (1954). Jan de Vries furthermore listed some 16 names in the second volume of his Altgermanische Religion- sgeschichte and briefly touched upon these in various chapters (de Vries 1970, pp. 475-479, §33, §176, §245, §352, §371, §417, §452, §481, §486). Moving to the Dutch-speaking area, only a few scholars have actually seriously concerned themselves with the subject. Jan de Vries published an article on two perceived pagan place-names, Franeker and Vroonlo, in 1932 (de Vries 1932), and included some place-names in the Netherlands he thought to be pagan in his Altgermanische Religion- sgeschichte (de Vries 1970, pp. 475-9, §345, §351, §371, §450). J.A. Huisman published an article in 1974 on two place-names in the province of Limburg, which he believed to have been Germanic cult sites (Huisman 1974). The most recent and most extensive work is an article published by Arend Quak in 2002 on ‘Germanic sacral place- names in the Low Countries’ (Quak 2002). He takes up most of the names mentioned in de Vries’ works, and has a fair number to add to the list. Some non-philologists have dealt with the subject too, and have made further attempts to identify pagan toponyms in the Netherlands. One of these is archaeologist and historian Judith Schuyf, who in her book on visible remnants of the pre-Christian past in the Netherlands mentions some toponyms (mostly names of hills), which she believes to refer to Germanic gods and heathen practices (Schuyf 1995, pp. 40, 41, 56, 57, 65). However, many of her finds are based on local legends and folk etymologies, which, together with her own obvious eagerness to find such remainders of heathen beliefs and practices, makes it dif- ficult to asses how trustworthy they are. Moreover, she offers no older attestations for any of the names she identifies as being pagan. Still, some of them may be interesting. As none of the researchers mentioned have written in English, information on Dutch pagan place-names has thus far only been avail- able to those who can read Dutch or (to some extent) German. One of the aims of this article is therefore to make the material more accessible to those outside the Low Countries. It also aims to present and assess some of the research done thus far and to suggest some new avenues for further research into pagan place-names in the Netherlands. As elsewhere, the pagan place-names in the Netherlands come in two kinds: compound place-names with the name of a deity or 40 CLAUDIA BOSHOUWERS supernatural being as their first element, and place-names indicating the former existence of a pagan cultic location or building, but without any reference to a specific deity. Unlike in Scandinavia, the former type is decidedly rare in the Dutch-speaking area. This is probably due to the much earlier Christianization of the Netherlands and Belgium and the greater fanaticism with which their inhabitants were brought to the new faith (Quak 2002, pp. 59, 69). Nevertheless, well-established toponyms are hard to get rid of, and so the Church was unable to wipe out all toponymic remnants of pre-Christian religion in the Low Countries, leaving some heathen place-names for us to study. Theophoric place-names Not a single uncontested place-name containing the name of an indi- vidual pagan deity remains in the Netherlands, for the only name Quak accepts as being without a doubt theophoric is Donderslag in Bel- gium. This name is thought to be a compound of Donar, the West- Germanic equivalent of Thór, with an Old Dutch ‑lô, ‘(clearing in a) forest, grove’ < Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (Orel 2003, pp. 238-239), which Quak believes may have had specific cultic connotations. He compares it to its Latin cognate lūcus ‘clearing in a forest, forest dedicated to a deity, forest (poetic)’, and notes moreover that in Old High German glosses, lôh is used almost exclusively to mean ‘sacred forest’ (Quak 2002, p. 60). The name thus corresponds closely to Scandina- vian Torslunda and would have meant ‘Donar’s (sacred) grove’. It also has exact parallels in England, where names deriving from *Thunres-lēah ‘Thunor’s sacred grove’ are attested six times (Gelling 1973, pp. 121-122). Also found in Belgium, as well as once in France (but all in areas that used to be Dutch-speaking), are three names going back on older Anslar < Germ. *ansu- ‘deity’ with Germ. *hlǣri, a word meaning ‘swampy forested area’: Anlier (Belgium), Asselier (Belgium) and Aulers (France) (Quak 2002, p. 61). These names are thus not dedicated to one specific deity, but rather to the entire pantheon. This occurs in the other Germanic countries as well, for instance Åsum in Sweden and Denmark,3 Oslo in Norway, and Aβlar in Germany (Green 3 Åsum is, however, usually interpreted as dative plural of the word ås ‘ridge’, see e.g.

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